Reporters in Hurricane Florence, please stop acting like you’re hanging on for dear life

It’s driving me up the wall.

If you have been watching videos from Hurricane Florence, you might have thought at one point or another: This does not look that bad. Videos of a swollen Cape Fear River, the general storm surge around Wilmington, N.C., and flooded homes in a nearby neighborhood might not resonate as the destruction you were expecting.

Of course, sitting in our dry chairs with dry roofs over our heads, it does not look bad, but the people who own the homes that are flooded with three feet of water probably disagree. Not to mention that the storm only just made landfall Friday morning. All of the worst impacts are still in the forecast.

But some reporters in the field cannot seem to let that go. There is not enough action in these videos, so they are manufacturing it, leaning into 30 mph winds like they are battling a Category 5. Chaining themselves to posts so they do not get blown away (seriously?). Be sure to hold your hand against your head lest the howling wind blow your I.F.B. out of your ear.

Really? There is no need for this. The wind is not the story here, and everyone knows it because they watched Florence drop in strength before it made landfall.

The real threat in Florence is not the wind, it is the rain. We have known this would be the case for days. Maybe as much as 50 inches will fall in the Carolinas and will generate life-threatening flash flooding through the weekend. This is all to say there are other, more important things we can talk in superlatives about.

Angela FritzAngela Fritz is an atmospheric scientist and The Washington Post's deputy weather editor. Before joining The Post, Fritz worked as a meteorologist at CNN in Atlanta and Weather Underground in San Francisco. She has a BS in meteorology and an MS in earth and atmospheric science. Follow